This is a transcript from the Business Secrets Podcast With Robert Kanaat. Click here to view and subscribe on iTunes.
Hello and welcome to another episode of Business Secrets. My name is Robert Kanaat – founder of wanderlustworker.com, the premier online destination for all things inspirational and transformational.
I wanted to thank you for being with me here today. Wherever you’re tuning in from, whatever time it is for you – morning, noon or night. I appreciate you spending the time with me. I hope that you are ready for this episode. Because this episode really has the capability to take your business literally from zero to hero.
I think it’s a pain point that a lot of people fail to address. There’s no pun intended because this really is about the prospects pain. Ninja prospecting, I want to call it. Ninja prospecting really has to do with getting inside your prospect’s mind. I think what a lot of businesses fail to do is – yes, they identify demographics, they know the age of their customers, they kind of know where they live, they know what they do for a living. But do they understand the prospect?
When I say prospect, talking about the consumer who is going to buy whatever you are pedaling. Whatever product, service, or information you have for sale – you have to understand the prospect and the prospects pain. The better you have addressed the prospect’s pain and you understand it implicitly – and the better you can kind of tailor that offer, whatever it is – to that prospect’s pain. The more you’re going to win.
When I talk about the prospect’s pain, I’m talking about like what is keeping the prospect up at night? What’s bothering him or her? I’m talking about what are their fears and angers and frustrations? Really that has to be addressed. If you have an offer that is not addressing a pain point in any of your marketing material for example – then you are going to fail with that offer. If it doesn’t fail, it’s not going to reach the heights that you want it to reach.
If you are in business and you are selling anything, you have to ensure that whatever you are selling solves pain. If you’ve ever heard Tony Robbins talk about – the two things in business are pain and pleasure. Advertisers have been using them for ages and ages. People want to avoid pain and gain pleasure.
What pains the prospect? How do you figure out what pains the prospect? How do you get in the prospects mind? Again, I’m not talking about where they are, what they’re doing. I’m talking about what are they thinking about? What’s their deepest, darkest fears? What is keeping that person literally up at night? What’s bothering them? That’s an important thing to address. If you are not addressing it, then there’s definitely going to be some friction in the sales process for you.
How do you address what the prospect literally is being pained by? You have to get into their mind. So how do you get into their mind? You have to figure out – not only put yourself in their shoes, but it’s like what are they desiring because of that pain? You have to really kind of sit down and think about that, and put yourself in that prospects shoes.
How do you become a ninja prospecter? You get into their mind. In order to do that, all you have to do is sit down and write a few things down. Sit down and think about the prospect. Yes, you understand the demographic of whoever is buying from you, but put yourself in their shoes right now. What are they worried about? Are they worried about losing their job? Are they worried about the economy? Are they worried about their children’s education? You have to literally figure out what they are afraid of, definitely afraid of.
Then you can tailor your marketing to that individual’s pain points. Whatever it is that you’re selling, it has to solve that pain. Better it solves that pain, the higher your conversions will be. The lower your ad costs are going to be, and a whole slew of great other things that are going to help move the business along. But if you’re not addressing that ultimate pain, then you’re really doing yourself a disservice and you’re not going to grow the company the way that you wish it to grow.
Another thing though that most people don’t understand, is that – yes, you have to identify the pain, the frustrations and target your offer to that person. But only a very small percentage of people will buy when you first present them something. That is why free plus shipping offers are so dang powerful. Because you can acquire that customer for free, and then get them into an email sequence. Then you can basically warm them up through an email sequence, and sell them whatever it is that you want to sell them. I’m talking about from low ticket to very high ticket offers.
How do you go about developing that relationship with the prospect? Well first of all, you’ve got to get them onto your list, whatever it is. Whether that’s with a lead magnet or anything like that. Checklist, PDF, eBook, cheat sheet – could be any of those things. A software trial. Really, a lead magnet can be anything. You’ve got to get that prospect into your world, and you’ve got to drip them value.
The ninja prospecting is – yes, getting into that prospects mind. You have to do that. You have to figure out, sit down and figure out what they’re thinking, and what’s keeping them up at night, what are they frustrated about, and what are they secretly desiring? After that, it’s rally about the follow-up. Because only a very small percentage – somewhere in the vicinity of 1 to 3% of sales happens right away.
Again, that’s why free plus shipping offers are so powerful, because the psychological barrier is down. It’s free. There’s real power behind the word “free.” Whatever you’re giving away for free really does work. Before I became this kind of internet marketer – I didn’t understand the power of the word free. I really didn’t. I just thought these marketers were just ra ra cheerleaders. They were jumping up and down and nothing was happening, but like it’s so powerful. You have no idea.
Getting them into your world and developing a relationship with an email sequence is critical and crucial. You have to do that. That’s how you become a ninja prospector. You have to figure out a way – first of all, figure out a way to address that pain point with copy. You have to be a good copywriter. If you’re not a good copywriter, find a good copywriter.
But if you write down the pain that that prospect is experiencing first, then you could easily figure out how to address that pain in copy. Keep your copy succinct, address pain. You want them to basically avoid pain and gain pleasure. How are you going to position your offer to avoid pain and gain pleasure?
All of that really boils down to some expertise, some skill, some practice. Don’t be afraid if you can’t get it on the first try. You get them into your world, and you develop a relationship with them. That’s how you ninja prospect. Ultimately, literally it takes roughly 108 days for an average sales cycle. 108 days. Again, people are not going to buy from you right away. Six to eight touches before somebody buys something. Sometimes it’s not directly from you. That 108 day sales cycle doesn’t mean that they’re buying from you. They first started thinking about what they wanted to buy 108 days ago, before they buy it.
You have to get in front of that person and constantly be in front of that person. However you get them into your world, you’ve got to be in front of that person. That’s really, really important. I think a lot of people fail to do that. If you’re not spending the time on this stuff, then if you’re not spending the time building out email sequences, you’re literally wasting your time in business.
Because this is all about touches. You want to be able to touch that consumer. You want to be in front of them. Re-targeting is definitely one way. You can re-target them, you can drop them emails. You can do a lot of that stuff. But at the end of the day, to really get them into your world, you’ve got to figure out that pain. You’ve got to figure out what they secretly desire, what they’re afraid of, what keeps them up at night. The better you can do that, the more you can tailor that offer.
Then after that, get in front of them. Do not go a day without getting in front of them. I know that it sounds weird. You’re going to be sending them email sequences every single day. But do a 90 day email sequence. I’m serious. A 30, 60, 90 day email sequence. Get serious. Get in front of them, and drip them value. You shouldn’t be selling in every single email that gets sent out. You want to drip value. You want to tell stories.
Stories are a very powerful vehicle. You want to be able to tell the right story to the prospect. That will actually help you bridge the divide between where they are and where you want them to be. Where they are, is where they are right now. Potentially this is where you were maybe before you built out the product.
Russell Brunson calls this the epiphany bridge. It’s like I had an epiphany, and then I started to do, and then I found this one little secret, or I found this one strategy that just crushed it for me. Because of that, I created this product or service or whatever. You have to create an epiphany bridge. The epiphany bridge basically helps you use that power – the power of the story to get things across to them.
Stories are really, really important and they help to convey whatever it is that you are trying to sell in a more efficient way. Because stories are just – it just brings down the barrier. People aren’t so closed off to stories, they enjoy stories. Stories are like the oldest form of communication. We’ve been telling stories for ages. Stories will definitely sell whatever it is that you’re peddling.
Get inside the prospects mind. But then get in front of them. Don’t be afraid to do a 30, 60, 90 day email sequence – and literally use the power of stories to sell whatever it is that you want to sell. Drip value. It doesn’t have to all be stories, it can be value – like lessons learned. It can be literally like tidbits of information about something related to their pain.
So you want to validate those pains. It’s a lengthy process, building out a really big email sequence, but it just crushes it. Most of your sales are going to happen there. Then when you do sell something, more ninja prospecting is to tag those buyers. And even so, hyperactive buyers. Because you want to drop them into back end funnels and sell them other things. That’s definitely a topic for another podcast episode.
But hopefully, I hope that this delivered some value for you guys. Don’t forget to like, share comment and subscribe on iTunes definitely. And I will speak to you guys next time.